The present invention is related to a liquid crystal panel, and a device and a method using the panel for displaying alphanumeric characters.
Conventionally, well-known methods for displaying alphanumeric characters are display by dot matrices or display using a liquid crystal panel. In the latter, a segment in a predetermined position is lighted among a pattern, a so-called "British flag," which is composed by putting an alphabetic character "X" on chinese character " " that is pronounced "ta" or "den". Such devices are disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publications No. JP-A-147070/1979 and No. JP-A-104196/1978, and Japanese Utility Model Provisional Publications No. JP-A-U35562/1980 No. JP-A-U55877/1981 and so on.
However, the conventional liquid crystal panels require fine patterns in order to display legible characters. For the purpose of making characters legible, it is necessary to provide very fine patterns on a display panel, and therefore to connect many drive signal generating circuits to the panel. Consequently, it takes many steps to manufacture a display panel and a display device. For example, the display by dot matrices. On the other hand, if simplified patterns are used for display in order to decrease the number of manufacturing steps, displayed alphanumeric characters become illegible. For instance, display with a British flag. Therefore, there is a desire that more legible alphanumeric characters would be displayed with a liquid crystal panel composed of a small number of segments.